Like Tarkowski, the PGMOL is Out of Control and Not Fit For Purpose

While Liverpool are kicked to pieces

I feel like I should be enjoying Liverpool’s derby victory, but such was the additional stress heaped upon me by the horror show from the PGMOL yet again, from the selection of officials to the way the officials behaved, it leaves a sour taste.

And yet of course, you can’t be accused of sour grapes if you win, and still complain. Liverpool have had to get out of too many official-created holes, and that then gets forgotten.

As such, this is a cobbled-together reminder of some officiating facts and data, and anecdotes, that will, as ever, fall short of painting the full picture; that would require a book, and for all the books I’ve written, I won’t be wasting my time on that.

Keith Hackett, the ex-head of the PGMOL, stated last night, “you don’t know what you’re doing”. (Did he sing it too!?)

At least the awful PGMOL, having first justified the horror, have apologised swiftly for this one. They had to, back-pedalling faster than a nun in a brothel.

Albeit this is almost a reverse of a situation from two seasons ago – a young ref making his Anfield debut sends off Alexis Mac Allister for the barest of fouls, and Paul Tierney, in the VAR booth, does nothing. Almost immediately after, it was overturned.

Apparently Tierney thought that tackle was worthy of a red, but not the one that could genuinely have snapped Mac Allister’s shin in two, as well as breaking his ankle.

This is a pattern. I’ve spent 5-10 years parsing the data at different levels and depths, and I’ll share bits of it here, in a roundup for anyone yet to notice. The problem is, these involve some long lists. As much as I don’t want to focus on this stuff, no one else seems to.

Not so long ago, a rookie ref at Anfield sends of Andy Robertson after 17 minutes for what was a clear foul, but not a DOGSO. That time it was Stuart Attwell being ... well, insert damning phrase here.

To get to almost 40 VAR games by one official for one club (Tierney and Liverpool) and to have never given a single subjective overturn (only objective offsides that are measured with lines) is part of a pattern.

Stuart Attwell, also close to 40 VAR games for the Reds, is another, who just doesn’t see things, including some of the clearest fouls you’ll ever see.

In his near-40 games, he has only given Liverpool two subjective overturns: both later in games, once when Liverpool were 5-0 up and once when they were 4-0 down in injury time. In other words, decisions that made no difference whatsoever.

I saw lots of dodgy data, in numbers and video evidence, in David Coote, and called him out as suspicous years ago.

It still hasn’t been addressed how he called Jürgen Klopp a ‘German cunt’ and slated Liverpool mere days before being the VAR in the infamous Goodison derby of 2020, when he missed Jordan Pickford’s assault on Virgil van Dijk and, before the era of accurate lines, ruled out Jordan Henderson’s last-minute winner when it was clearly level, at worst. (And this was before I knew he worked at the City complex a decade ago, which I only discovered after he was sacked.)

My issue all along is that these are not mistakes.

This is not just another Tierney ‘mistake’, as this is an official who, as a ref, took longer than almost anyone has ever to give Liverpool a penalty (c.15 games), and who clashed with Klopp repeatedly, as Klopp saw him as an imposter.

Since his very first game as ref, before the nearly 40 that have followed as VAR, Tierney made decisions to, at best, screw Liverpool over. His first act was to disallow a late Liverpool winner, on the suggestion of his linesman and future long-term collaborator, Constantine Hatzidakis, who would later elbow Andy Robertson, which should have led to him losing his job.

As the VAR, Tierney overruled a clear penalty at Old Trafford for Eric Bailey’s wild challenge on Nat Phillips, where Bailey barely touched the ball and took out Phillips. It was not quite as dangerous as the James Tarkowski one, but it was similar, and with the tiniest touch on the ball apparently making it okay, when for at least a decade, getting the ball has been irrelevant, especially if it’s 99% man that you take.

Tierney ruled out a Liverpool goal for a foul on David de Gea when Virgil van Dijk jumped near him, and de Gea dropped the ball. Both Gary Neville and Roy Keane said on Sky that it was absolutely ludicrous, there was no foul.

Tierney could see it, though. He has special eyes, you see. Just like Stuart Attwell, who sees things, like in The Sixth Sense.

Yet these men can never see anything for Liverpool, just against Liverpool.

That would concern any fan of any club, if the two guys who do VAR in around 40% of that team’s games, only ever gave two overturns for your club, and both of those were irrelevant?

Barney Ronay’s description is as good as any photo you’ll see:

“The first was a wild tackle from James Tarkowski on 11 minutes that should have drawn a straight red card. Did Tarkowski really need to kick the ball so hard that he flew through it, through an empty pocket of space, both feet off the ground and into the leg of Alexis Mac Allister? What degree of force is excessive force, if not this? The ball was gettable. It really didn’t need the follow through. This is, at best, terrible technique.

“Somehow the VAR was able to watch replays of this, to see Mac Allister’s leg bending back under the impact, the sheer pointlessness of going through the ball at that speed and height.”

Again, the ‘somehow’ is something people keep saying. If a man whose job is to know what is and isn’t a red card cannot tell via brilliant, and sickening angles that this is a red card, then he’s either incompetent, corrupt or stupid.

This was so clear, so vivid, that it’s beyond contention.

Coote, meanwhile, in only three Liverpool games as ref (as well as 13 as VAR), would reappear at tense moments in Liverpool’s title races, and do things like award Brighton 14 more free-kicks than Liverpool at Anfield a year ago (a 1-in-1,000 occurrence for a home team to suffer); and then reappear when Liverpool went top early this season, to twice wave that there was no foul on Mo Salah as, running free at the Kop end, Salah was grabbed and hauled over by Leon Bailey, and yet another red card for an opponent at Liverpool vanished.

And people said it was very strange, and hard to understand.

And I said no, there was more to it, it’s not just a case of not understanding; it was a case of Coote not wanting to give what he clearly saw. Days later, sick videos emerged, and Coote’s career was over.

We found out that Coote genuinely despised Liverpool and Klopp, as I’d suggested appeared to be the case. To point this out is perhaps to make me sound conspiratorial, when it’s just a fact of life, and also a fact of life is that his data involving Liverpool looked iffy.

Again, if any neutrals are reading this, imagine if Pep Guardiola or Mikel Arteta were called ‘Spanish cunts’ by a ref who then clearly and immediately distorted games against them?

(Albeit the Spanish are not as hated within English football as the Germans, as seen by Harry Redknapp’s recent ‘hilarious’ routine about Thomas Tuchel being a spy sent to ruin England, as if this is 1945. That said, Rafa Benítez, in his time at Liverpool, was constantly referred to, off air, as ‘the Fat Spanish waiter’ by two famous Sky presenters, who thankfully found themselves exiled. Hopefully the refs weren’t saying the same about Rafa, but who knows?)

Arsenal may have some reasonable gripes this season, but imagine if a) a ref had actually said that about your manager whilst also having a love of cocaine, and b) also had a good goal ruled out by sloppy, unprofessional VARs who’d just got back from a well-paid gig thousands of miles away, in a game that was lost? Oh, and c) had a player elbowed by a linesman?

Regarding Coote, this is a man who gave four subjective penalty overturns for the Manchester clubs (having once worked for the Manchester FA with Chris Kavanagh at the Man City complex, but which has been memory-holed) in the first eight months of VAR existing.

He was investigated in 2017 for his role in what was then stated as a recent job, which I can only presume was his role at the Manchester FA, based on the City campus, and where I’m assuming he worked with Paul Tierney, but that’s just a guess based on his Greater Manchester catchment area.

Again, imagine if a referee had been based at Melwood ten years ago with some Scouse refs, and went around saying offensive things like Coote did?

Six years into the VAR era, Liverpool have just two subjective penalty overturns in well over 200 games, when rivals have 10 or more. More overturn penalties have gone against the Reds than for them.

And as noted many times, Liverpool also went eight years and 305 games without an opponent receiving a second yellow card, when the lowest any other Premier League club had received in that period was five, and clubs like Crystal Palace benefitted from 13.

If Palace saw 13 opponents sent off for a second yellow in a run of 305 games, why were Liverpool on zero? The odds of none seem more like 10,000-to-one, to add to various 1,000-to-one occurrences.

Why do Liverpool also never benefit from foul DOGSOs, but are penalised for them?

In virtually every type of officiating data I parse, Liverpool are often outliers in a bad way. Not always the very worst, but in quite a few categories, the very worst.

• As of a few months ago, there had been 56 subjective overturns within Premier League matches before the 27th minute. None were for Liverpool.

• As of a few months ago, and going back to 2014, there had been 26 Premier League penalties before the 15th minute of games (excluding 2020/21 due to lack of crowds, when everyone got more early penalties). None were for Liverpool.

So I will generally say things like:

1. Were any of Tierney, Coote or Attwell involved?

2. Was it before the 15th minute if it should have been a Liverpool penalty and wasn’t?

3. Was it before the 27th minute if it should have been a clear VAR overturn (bar offsides)?

4. Was the ref a rookie?

And from that, I can tell you the answer, that categorically, Liverpool would not have got the decision last night. Dodgy VAR, early in game, rookie ref, Anfield.

I won’t be parsing any new officiating data (for a while at least), as I keep saying how I get sick of this stuff, but have probably spent the equivalent of a full working year on this data in the last half-decade. Most of this is in my brain, and bar approaching senility (or the machine from the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), will remain there.

I know the patterns, and I don’t think it’s confirmation bias if you know a pattern and everything then continues to match that pattern. Those are called facts.

Hatzidakis, incredibly, reappeared recently on Liverpool games (a cup semifinal, when Bergvall should have been sent off).

Darren England, of the Luis Díaz onside goal ruled offside at Spurs VAR catastrophe, is back too. I wonder if a club like Man City would have allowed any of this to happen to them? Wouldn’t they have 3,000 lawyers suing everyone?

In his 2nd Liverpool game, Sam Barrott let Lucas Bergvall make three yellow-card offences in the league game at Spurs (two were late in the game, Gary Neville was laughing at how silly it was that a second yellow wasn’t shown), before Attwell also didn’t send Bergvall off for the clear yellow-card foul in the cup semifinal.

Barrott, in his very first Liverpool game (away at Southampton), gave a penalty against Andy Robertson that was a clear foul, but possibly outside the box. It was inconclusive, but he opted immediately for the spot.

That’s fine, but it’s an interesting Rorschach test: do you see a penalty against Liverpool? Often in games, refs err on the side of caution, free-kick on the very edge of the box.

In my research I found that new refs (doing a club the first 1-9 times), going back to those who emerged around a decade ago (thus after Anthony Taylor, Michael Oliver and others were up and running), produced home Big Decision balances of, or trending up to +9 for the comparison clubs in grey below (across 25-41 games), but were neutral for Liverpool at Anfield in 33.

Whereas the likes of Taylor, Oliver and others, in the dark red line, used to give Liverpool decisions in line with other clubs. Can anyone give an explanation as to why three lines are in perfect synch, and one is terribly off?

So the newer breed of Tierney, Attwell and Chris Kavanagh were not giving Liverpool anything at all in their first 10-15 games; just like a defence trying to keep it tight for the first 10-15.

It’s Anfield, keep it tight, don’t give anything away.

(As an aside, Tierney and Kavanagh handed, literally, Man City the league via the Everton game in 2021/22, and Attwell was VAR when Doku karate-kicked Mac Allister in the chest.)

The same applies to all the refs to emerge since. And for the PGMOL to send a promising but raw ref to do a vital Mersey derby just seemed ... well, it seemed off. Frankly, it seems so insane as to be as reckless as the Tarkowski tackle.

As I noted for years, Liverpool did not get anywhere near the number of penalties they should have under Klopp, but at least the Reds have done better on that score in 2024/25 – so no real arguments there; albeit VARs have also ruled two foul penalties to not be penalties this season, which is as many as actual foul penalties all VARs have awarded the club since 2019.

By all means take them away if you don’t think they’re penalties, but why aren’t you also giving?

As I’ve shown in the past few months (see older articles for more thorough explanations), Liverpool have the worst Foul Balance of any club in the past three years, and adjusted for possession, the only club whose data doesn’t make sense, given that, for everyone else, Foul Balance logically improves with greater possession. (The more you have of the ball, the more you should be fouled, and the less you have of the ball, the more chance you have to make fouls.)

But for Liverpool, the graph goes down, and remains in negative balance, and is especially bad this season (as of a few games ago).

And Liverpool’s Foul Balance vs xG in away games in the last three seasons?

Liverpool make a normal number of fouls, especially when compared to other hard-pressing teams, but receive an outlying low number of free-kicks, especially in away games.

Only Man United suffer a similar fate (as the other Twin Giant of English football), but when adjusted for possession, Liverpool remain sole outliers. That said, Man United did tend to get a lot of Big Decisions for a number of years, including a 14-penalty season, and haven’t been a great side in the past decade. (The Manchester clubs tended to get twice the number of home penalties as Liverpool, but that has changed this season.)

Patterns

I’ve shown in a study of 600+ penalties from 2011 to 2019 that refs are harsher on overseas players in both boxes. That traditionally, Liverpool get more penalties when the team has more British players, and a British manager. I can tell you a ton of officiating patterns that are either unfair or, something worse.

Mo Salah ranks below 2,000th for frequency of Premier League free-kicks received since he arrived at Liverpool in 2017.

This just popped up (shared on the site), about how foreign Liverpool players are treated at Anfield when Brits kick the shit out of them (talking about a game in 2013), as something to laugh about. (Not that Luis Suarez wasn’t a lunatic, but it sums up the point I’m making in general – thuggish Brit allowed to foul foreigner with impunity, ‘not even booked’ he boasts, and everyone has a good giggle).

Tarkowski is an England international.

Harry Kane is obviously the England captain. Let’s go back to what was said about this (another clear red card that was early in the game, in a game where Tierney and Kavanagh were in cahoots.)

How far have we come?

At the time, Clattenburg told the Monday Night Club on BBC Radio 5 Live.

“If you don’t believe this is a clear and obvious error about Kane, you’re not doing your job correctly.

“I think we, as referees, are sometimes guilty of knowing the laws of the game but we don’t understand the game.

“VAR cannot get this wrong. Referees can, because they have a split second. VAR have all the angles, he’s got all the slow-motion, he can see the point of contact.

“If they are saying that his leg has to be planted, which is a new one to me, if the leg was high, the studs were showing, it’s reckless, he’s lunged. For me, he’s endangered the safety of the opponent.

“Robbo is lucky today that he’s still walking. We should understand footballers more because he’s not going to leave his leg there, why should he? He’s not going to want his leg broken and his career put in doubt.”

Okay, Aaron Cresswell, another England international. Does this look familiar?

In a statement released to Sky Sports after the game, Stuart Attwell’s reasoning for not punishing Cresswell for his challenge was because it “didn’t have the required force or intensity or clear contact”. Micah Richards, however, said: “It’s a red card isn’t it, it’s out of control … we’re told that when a player does that sort of thing it’s going to be a red card”.

Attwell as VAR again (no punishment for Robert Sanchez), albeit you need to see video of this to get the full horror of the speed of the impact and how Luis Díaz’s head is smashed back, which was almost up there with the recent six-game ban for the Millwall keeper for his sickening challenge:

I can show loads more examples, but the point is that they are part of patterns, not random errors by officials.

The idea that both Doku and Mac Allister came in high is about the time I lost all faith.

Mac Allister’s feet were on the ground, and so this is not just a bad judgement call, but a corruption of basic fact, as well as the laws of physics. This was said while looking at the image below. This, after the cover-up at Sky of the Díaz offside, which was initially brushed under the carpet until a story could be concocted after the match.

The same names kept cropping up in the various areas I looked into. Coote, Tierney and Attwell; others too, but not as frequently.

(Coote has been swept under the carpet, too.)

Refs that Liverpool fans didn’t like, such as Anthony Taylor, came out as okay, if not perfect; but I’m not asking for perfection.

(Only Craig Pawson came out as clearly fair – not generous – across a whole host of metrics, and he hardly ever gets Liverpool games.)

Damning

Some of what I claim may be coincidental, but I feel I’ve built up a damning dossier, with too many “inexplicable” decisions.

So there are so many small factors working against the Reds, as well as bigger ones; and the PGMOL seem to select the refs who will do most damage. Any ref I seem to praise is never seen again.

Refs who are terrible are on swift rotation.

Such as, bringing in Coote at key times. They used to hurry back anyone who had an issue with Klopp, and now, have turned Arne Slot from a calm Dutchman into a gaslit rage-a-holic. At least it looks like it won’t cost Slot the title, but Klopp would likely have had one more with fair refereeing.

After all, why would you put the iffy Tierney into a key game like last night, and also make the rookie ref’s first Mersey derby one with the title at stake, after the recent away derby was so fractious? – knowing that a young ref is much more likely bottle big decisions? (As I could have told you, that’s what rookie refs do at Anfield regarding Liverpool, perhaps as they’re told to not be intimidated by the Kop, which is something Peter Walton has admitted in a roundabout way, regarding not letting 60,000 sway you, with 60,000 the number of people at Anfield).

It seems reckless from the PGMOL, at best.

While I’ve complained before that Liverpool get the fewest refs in general due to the three Merseysiders not being able to do the Reds (but Manchester refs can do all clubs), and said we need to see less of the likes of Tierney as a ref (as he was turning up most weeks), he’s now a VAR most weeks (due to injury), and if you’re going to blood new refs at Anfield, for fuck’s sake don’t choose a title-impacting Mersey derby.

It’s like picking some random young rookie to ref a cup final.

Hopefully Barrott will become a good ref, and I liked Tony Harrington’s first couple of games, before he totally lost the plot in the Fulham match (a total shitshow all round), ‘aided’ by a guy who appears to be stealing a living from the VAR booth, Attwell. That cost Liverpool two points, without doubt.

Young Lewis Smith did well in the Southampton game, where Liverpool got two penalties, albeit the clear handball was only spotted by the VAR.

Indeed, one of the difficulties in determining who made a decision is one of the reasons I’ve eased off on some types of analysis, as you can’t easily see, without a lot of further research, if the ref or the VAR awarded a decision, and if it was the VAR, was the ref involved in the process?

I don’t want to apportion credit or blame where it’s not due.

It’s also very hard to measure and quantify how many incidents lead to no decision, like Tarkowski on Mac Allister, Doku on Mac Allister, Tarkowski on Salah (Goodison), Mings on Gakpo, Sanchez on Díaz, Bailey on Salah, and all the other clear fouls, red-card offences, penalties and DOGSOs mysteriously waved away. They don’t show up in the basic data.

(All of these were on foreign Liverpool players, btw, albeit most of Liverpool’s attackers are foreign.)

Yet I can say that the data shows holes where Liverpool’s Big Decisions should be.

PGMOL Ruining the Premier League

Above all else, I’d also like to just enjoy the football.

My frustration is that it feels like refs are ruining matches from the first minute, with the added sense of us being gaslit by the PGMOL.

If the ref doesn’t have the best angle for the Tarkowski assault, it’s easier to live with (albeit maddening) than watching the repeated X-rated replays (that could have led to X-rays) and Tierney doing what Tierney does, with yet another abdication of duties; like a policeman watching an armed robbery take place and taking another bite of his donut.

Remember, Tierney also blew up six seconds early when Sadio Mané was through on goal at Old Trafford, as one of his many Mancunian-favouring decisions that remain ‘inexplicable’. This is a repeat offender.

In this case, barely 11 minutes gone, and it should be a win-guaranteeing 11 vs 10. And with goal difference still fairly tight (if Arsenal win games and Liverpool lose games, to narrow the gap, the goal difference will shrink), it denied a chance to extend that too.

At Goodison last season, Andy Madley gave a very aggressive Everton nine fouls and Liverpool zero, until Everton scored just before half-time. In his first game at Anfield, earlier this season, Darren Bond (fourth official last night) gave a truly rubbish Leicester team 12 more free-kicks than Liverpool. In the Ipswich away game at the start of the season the number was similar from Tim Robinson, even though Ipswich were by far the more aggressive team.

Teams somehow bully Liverpool, yet win all the free-kicks. That stinks.

In the Palace away game this season, it was 11-0 on that metric, until the second half, thanks to the waddling no-hoper, Simon Hooper.

And in the away derby, Everton kicked Liverpool all over the park and won the Foul Balance by a massive margin, with a clear booting into the air of Mo Salah in injury time, not given, allowing Everton to go up the other end and equalise. The once reliable Michael Oliver has simply stopped seeing things. Slot has lost the plot because he has got to see how Liverpool are officiated. In reply, the PGMOL send a rookie ref to Anfield.

I don’t want refs to get death threats or direct abuse. Many will probably be decent blokes. It is a difficult job, but they make it so much harder for themselves.

And general, unfounded paranoia and conspiracies around refs don’t help. There has to be some evidence. You need patterns, not one-offs, or small samples.

While not all my doubts about officials and the PGMOL will be valid, I’ve parsed enough data – hundreds of thousands of rows of data across various categories – to feel it’s fair to question them and the various suspicious patterns in big sample sizes.

Having zero scepticism in life leads to corruption, as those under no scrutiny can get away with whatever they want. Officials in any walk of life have to be held to account, even if they’re honest. The checks have to be in place.

As handsomely-paid ‘professionals’ taking charge of a multi-billion-pound sport that people invest their money and souls into, they should be critiqued.

I don’t know if there’s active, traditional corruption, but when you have murderous foreign states involved in a sport, and various other iffy characters, and tons of cash sloshing about, and various levels of financial cheating, you have to wonder. The spot-fixing betting markets are certainly corrupt. Why would it stop there?

Anyone who is corrupt needs to be sacked, and that corruption doesn’t have to be as part of some grand conspiracy, just an intent to be unfair to a club or a player or a manager. Just to be knowingly unfair is to be corrupt.

David Coote was clearly corrupt to say what he said about Liverpool and Klopp just days before he was the VAR, and then gave everything against Liverpool. Yet Coote was sacked for his comments about spot-fixing; he could have been found sticking pins into a doll of Jürgen Klopp with a gram of Charlie jammed up his nose, and still be fine, it seems. As if corruption can only centre around betting.

And as for VAR as a concept, I still feel it can work, but if you can’t see the Tarkowski assault as a clear red-card offence, what are you doing in that job?

It should be a sackable offence, to not see that for what it is, when that’s what your job is, and when league titles rest on these kind of clear, obvious and inarguable offences.

As fans we deserve better. The PGMOL need to stop apologising, and clean house.

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